Magento: Mysql records with NULL values are not fetched in query

After banging my head on my desk trying to get the records with NULL values with Magento ORM, it was found that writing

$collection->addAttributeToFilter(‘somefield’, ‘null’)  
$collection->addAttributeToFilter(‘somefield’, array(‘is’ => ‘null’))

will check for any blank values like this: WHERE somefield = ”

So if you want to fetch records that have NULL values in Magento style, you need to write as following:

$collection->addAttributeToFilter(‘somefield’, array(‘null’=>’null’)

will check like WHERE somefield = null

Hope this saves someone’s time!